Absence of Personality
by Brochelle
Summary: His gravelly voice was a welcome change from the clinical nature of her exchanges with other soldiers. There was a character in the stoicism; personality in the absence of personality. Halo CE


Organic life was noisy. This was one of the few benefits of it, Cortana mused; organic life couldn't help but be loud. From a pulse, to footsteps — and to breathing, and to screaming — it was impossible for organic life to be completely silent. Tactically speaking, the odds were against them if anyone bothered to listen.

As an artificial intelligence, Cortana suffered from none of these mortal follies. She made no such sounds to betray her existence. But they were still a benefit to her — and to her companion, the Master Chief.

"Thermal sensors are picking up four contacts up ahead, Chief," she whispered. It was just for show, the _whispering_; she didn't need to whisper, nor shout, nor even talk, for that matter, but it was what deemed _personality_. "Judging by the intensity, I'm betting we have a couple special operatives. Standard cloaking mechanisms."

His heart rate spiked momentarily — as she anticipated — but he continued his steady jog down the path.

In their current environment, any conflict's odds of ending in victory were stacked against them. Halo's landscape, already alien in the most extreme sense, was flooded black, and the outline of the surrounding forest was visible thanks only to the night sky, dappled with more stars than space. The evac point was buried in the hills to the north - or as what had been established as north, following the curvature of the Halo ring - and the radio silence enforced by Captain Keyes meant no chance of back-up. Covenant _owned _this turf; their two person team couldn't afford to irritate the tenants.

Engaging with the local Covenant would be more trouble than it was worth — and the Master Chief knew as well as she did that these gussied-up aliens were harbingers for a bigger problem.

"Anything else?" His gravelly voice was a welcome change from the clinical nature of her exchanges with other soldiers. There was character in the stoicism; personality in the absence of personality. "You don't send cloaked soldiers unless you're protecting something."

"That's the general rule, yes," Cortana said. "But my scanners aren't picking up anything else. It's possible that this is just a scouting party."

John fell silent, and the four red dots, still just blips of color on a radar, drew closer. At two kilometers, the seven foot tall, armor-encased super soldier slipped quietly — _nearly _silently — into the shadows cast by the trees, and slowed his pace.

By this point in their unconventional relationship, Cortana had learned that the Chief's silence implied two scenarios. One: he simply had nothing else to say. Two: he was thinking of a response that most likely contradicted whatever she just said.

Had she the means, she would have put down money on the second scenario.

At one kilometer, John stopped completely and rested against one of the trees. In the artificial intelligence's equivalent of nervous pacing, Cortana began to run diagnostics on his armor. She reviewed the topographical data she had acquired before their attempt to land on Halo had gone sour and produced a dozen different possible scenarios.

"Scouting party nearing. I recommend hiding; my calculations do not indicate that engaging the enemy will end… well."

"Define 'well'," John replied. Cortana registered the faint humor in his voice; how it raised it, colored it.

"Assuming that these are scouts rather than glorified bouncers, we may be alerting whatever higher-up they report to. If we fight them, unless we manage to take them all out at once — and let me remind you, they _are _special operatives, they're no push-overs — we risk blowing our cover and not reaching evac in time."

"And if they're _glorified bouncers_—"

"—Then we'll have a bigger problem on our hands. If you're right, whatever they're protecting is going to be heavily fortified. The same could be said in the case that they are scouts, however."

He was silent for a moment. Then, as he pushed away from the tree and assumed his hold on his assault rifle, he said, "We take them out. There might be more Marines taking this route to reach the evac zone. They don't have an AI to mark their targets for them."

"You make it sound like I do all the work."

Her quip was met with nothing. Cortana had learned weeks ago not to take it personally. She could easily validate that theory by analyzing his heart rate, his brain activity; anything that indicated antagonism rather than natural personality. It could also be validated, however, by scenario one: he simply had nothing else to say.

_It was personality in the absence of personality_.

Cortana switched all focus back to the soon-to-be conflict. She was still picking up only four Elites, their camouflage packs — still delightfully primitive and inefficient, in the context of the rest of the Covenant's technology — lighting up like flares on the thermal sensors she accessed through John's suit. The amount of power it took to generate complete invisibility was, ironically, _louder _— in a technical sense — than the organism that was "invisible".

The Master Chief kept to the forest's cover and neatly flanked the group. Through his visor, Cortana watched as the Elites moved south, almost _strolling_, in a single file line.

"I recommend taking them out one by one," she said quietly.

Her view through his helmet's visor suddenly shifted; angling quickly down and then up again. For a few nanoseconds too long, Cortana pondered the gesture before realizing that he'd _nodded_ at her.

"Be careful," Cortana added. "If one of them realizes what's up, they'll scatter - and have fun fighting invisible, special operative Elites in a forest at night."

Without a hesitation to even hint at a reply, the Master Chief blurred forward.

The last Elite in the line fell victim to a combat knife. A similar fate took the next one. John was careful to catch both before they fell, laying them down individually before moving on to the next. Then, as he stepped over the second corpse, the third Elite - perhaps through habit, perhaps through paranoia - chanced a look behind him.

Reflexively, John threw a punch.

The alien's four-jawed face, unprotected by armor, cracked violently as the Spartan's fist made contact. With a gargled roar, the Elite stumbled back into the last Elite in the line, who flickered like a spent candle; then, whispering faintly, it disappeared completely.

"Tagging contact," Cortana whispered. A small blue arrow appeared on his helmet's heads-up display, darting horizontally across the screen and leading into the forest.

By the time the last Elite had retreated into the forest, John had taken hold of the fallen Elite's chest plate and hauled him up to his feet.

The alien growled and swung a fist. John ducked under it, crouching down and twisting sideways to deliver a swift kick to the alien's multi-jointed left leg. When the alien fell to one knee, John retrieved his combat knife and drove it through the alien's throat and into its brain.

"Warning: last contact is returning to finish the job."

John yanked the knife out of the alien's skull and returned it to its sheath on his armor. Just as swiftly, he rose to his feet and sprinted for the darkness of the forest. _Opposite _the direction the Elite was coming from.

"Are we retreating?" Cortana asked, amused. The conflict had gone bad enough that she could afford to poke some holes in his pride, however nonexistent it was.

"No," he deadpanned. "We're reassessing the situation from a distance."

"Ah. That's what the kids are calling it these days."

John was quiet. Cortana reviewed the location of the Elite — a dozen feet behind them, gaining fast, and having abandoned all hope of stealth, was now roaring its battlecry — and felt herself smile, as only an intangible smattering of data and programming could smile.

_Personality in the absence of personality, indeed._

* * *

**_A/N: My knowledge of Halo: CE is hazy at best, so apologies for anything noncanonical._**


End file.
